Ninth Twinhomes
A nine-lot infill development in Bend's Orchard District: eighteen homes where there used to be one, designed as butterfly-roofed “twinhomes” that fit the neighborhood instead of overwhelming it.
Location
Bend, OR
Category
ADU
Year
2026
ROLE
Architect, Hiatus Homes
A half-acre lot in Bend's Orchard District that previously held one single-family home. Hiatus Homes had begun a nine-lot subdivision when I joined as Design Director, working with a civil engineer to create nine narrow lots, each running from Norton Avenue south to a new private alley north. The plan was a primary home plus attached ADU on every lot: eighteen dwelling units total, thirty-six units per acre. The architecture was the open question. Skinny lots (23.5 feet wide by 76 feet deep), three feet of grade from sidewalk to alley, three-story buildings sitting six feet apart under the small-dwelling-unit code path. The risk was producing a row of identical apartment blocks that would feel wrong in a neighborhood of single-family homes.
The lead design move was a butterfly roof. Hiatus had a trademark shed roof on previous projects; I split it down the middle so each pair of homes reads as two pitches butting together. Each lot gets a main unit fronting Norton Avenue and an attached ADU at the rear off the alley. The butterfly profile signals "two homes joined" instead of "one long building." Across the nine lots, paint colors, materials, and accent panels vary so the row reads as nine pairs of distinct buildings rather than one uniform development. Bent plate steel canopies over each front door echo the butterfly angle. Dark-stained horizontal cedar wraps the ADU entry walls to give the smaller rear unit some warmth where it tucks behind the garage.
The Master Permit process drove most of the technical work. All eighteen units had to be functionally identical so they could permit as a single repeating type, which meant pinning finish floor heights, garage slab elevations, and entry stair locations down to the inch across nine variations of the same grade change. I worked closely with the civil engineer to make drainage and entry levels work on the slope, and with the structural engineer to confirm the butterfly roofs would perform under Bend's snow loads. The Master Permit got approved quickly because the drawings were tight.
Eighteen units across nine lots, built in fifteen months from the start of vertical construction. Faster and cleaner than anything Hiatus had built at this scale before, with fewer RFIs than the developer had ever experienced. Part of that was the Master Permit doing its job. Part was finding a GC sophisticated enough for an eighteen-unit job after Hiatus had cycled through earlier builders who weren’t set up to handle the scale. I helped vet the new contractor and stayed on through CA, final plat, and all eighteen certificates of occupancy.
Where there used to be one single-family home, there are now eighteen homes, each under 700 square feet of living space, each with daylit interiors, tall ceilings, and territorial views. Thirty-six units per acre is dense for Bend. The reason the project doesn't feel so dense is design: the butterfly roofs, the varied colors, the per-unit accent panels, the front-door canopies. Small moves that let infill at this scale fit a neighborhood that wasn't built for it.
IMAGE CREDIT:
Hiatus Homes
